This pompous ceremony celebrated the opening of the Reichstag,
which was elected on March 5, 1933, a month after Hitler became Chancellor.
Hitler and Goebbels picked Potsdam, the old Prussian capital outside Berlin, as
the venue. They chose March 21st because, 62 years earlier on that day, Otto von
Bismarck had convened the first Reichstag of the "Second Reich." The
entire event was broadcast on radio to present the Third Reich as the legitimate
heir to the Kaiser's Reich and weaken objections to Hitler’s seizure of power.

The Day of Potsdam was introduced with religious services. The
Evangelical deputies (including Göring) worshiped in the Church of Saint
Nicholas (Nikolaikirche). The Catholics had their own special mass in the parish
church. But Hitler and Goebbels, both nominally Catholic, stayed away from the
mass because the German bishops were upholding a ban against the Nazis

The main event was a state ceremony in the Potsdam Garrison
Church (Garnisonkirche), the site of the Prussian royal tombs. Eighty-five year
old Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Hitler both spoke.
Hindenburg wore his field marshal’s uniform. Hitler, in a cutaway, looked like
an officious headwaiter. A solemn handshake between Hindenburg, ramrod straight,
and Hitler, head humbly bowed, sealed the "marriage of old grandeur and new
power." This, by the way, was the same Hindenburg who, a few weeks earlier,
had said he would make Hitler a postmaster so that Hitler could lick stamps with
Hindenburg’s picture on them.

Hindenburg laid a wreath on the Garnisonkirche tomb of
Frederick the Great as a 21-gun salute was fired. Then, together with Hitler,
the old Field Marshal reviewed a parade of Reichswehr, police, SA, SS, and Steel
Helmet units. The festivities ended with the return of the deputies to the Kroll
Opera House, where the Reichstag was convened. Two days later, the Reichstag
accepted the Enabling Law and relinquished its own power.

Hitler addresses Hindenburg and members of the new government in the
Garnisonkirche:

"The National Uplift Government is determined to fulfill
the task it has taken over for the German Volk. Therefore, the government appears before the German
Reichstag today with the ardent wish to find support within the Volk to carry
out its mission."